Russell Stephen Demuth

A single lens with no moving parts for rapid high-resolution 3D image capture

There are many visual inspection and sensing applications where both a high resolution image and a depth-map of the imaged object are desirable at high speed. Presently available methods to capture 3D data (stereo cameras and structured illumination), are limited in speed, complexity, and transverse resolution. Additionally these techniques rely on a separated baseline for triangulation, precluding use in confined spaces. Typically, off the shelf lenses are implemented where performance in resolution, field-of-view, and depth of field are sacrificed in order to achieve a useful balance. Here we present a novel lens system with high-resolution and wide field-of-view for rapid 3D image capture. The design achieves this using a single lens with no moving parts. A depth-from-defocus algorithm is implemented to reconstruct 3D object point clouds and matched with a fused image to create a 3D rendered view.